Wednesday, December 7, 2011

P(l)aying to Win: Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Browed

From time to time, I receive intriguing proposals by electronic mail. Nigerian business opportunities, discounts from retailers I've never heard of, invitations from people in Portland to go have coitus with myself... Most of the time I end up passing (except on the coitus, naturally), but recently I received a particularly compelling email that displayed considerable initiative from a gentleman offering to "put together a high-quality article written specifically for the site."

Anything I send over would be written with the site's readership in mind - as long as you're happy with the resulting material, you'd be welcome to publish it as you see fit and the content will be owned by you entirely (in that I won't send it to anyone else, either before or after publication).

Now this was intriguing. Just imagine what I could do if I were freed from the 14-17 minutes a day I spend laboring on this blog. I could take daily "epic" rides while swaddled in Rapha; I could work on my trackstand; I could finally build that urban chicken coop I've always dreamed of having and get written up in the New York Times for it--all while some schmuck does my work for me! Best of all, it wouldn't cost me a cent:

There is absolutely no charge for this and no strings attached; the only thing I would ask in return is that I'm able to include a link to a site within the article - nothing shady or unethical, just one of the professional businesses I freelance for.

After much deliberation, though, I decided I simply couldn't go through with it. Sure, I'd be living the lavish lifestyle of the 1%, and sure nobody would notice my absence, but if there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that a man without integrity is like a man without a top-of-the-line 11-speed electronic road bike component group: a total loser. So I passed, and you can rest assured that every word you read on this blog is still hand-picked and manually typed by me alone. You can also be sure that I would never, ever include gratuitous links strictly for marketing purposes.

With that out of the way, are you having trouble finding the right gift for that special man in your life this holiday season? Well, why not enroll him in the Underwear of the Month Club? With hundreds of styles from cutting-edge basics to performance fabrics, to body enhancing designs, the Andrew Christian Underwear of the Month club is a way to make sure your man never has to go back to boring underwear. Join the club and designer Andrew Christian will handpick a variety of briefs and boxers including fan favorites, brand new designs, and pre-release exclusives unavailable to the general public.

Details are still hazy, but according to a Swiss magazine Vino surreptitiously purchased a membership in the Classics Victory of the Month Club. (The Classics Victory of the Month Club should not be confused with the Johan Museeuw Hair Club for Men.) For his part, Vino denies it (though he admits he did consult with Johan Museeuw on a pair of cosmetic eyebrows), and I'm inclined to believe him. Supposedly, he paid Alexandr Kolobnev €100,000 for the victory, and it's difficult to imagine Vino has that kind of money. Then again, it's possible he was flush with macaroni money after starring in a pasta commercial:

The above video was forwarded to me by Klaus of Cycling Inquisition, and could very well be that Vino is using a lucrative sideline as a pasta spokesperson to bankroll bribes to bolster his dwindling cycling career. Incidentally, it was while producing one of these commercials that Vinokourov lost his eyebrows, when a a burst of flame from the cooking range completely singed them off of his face. It was huge news in Kazakhstan at the time, akin to that time back in the 80s when Michael Jackson caught fire while filming a Pepsi ad. In the long run though the incident proved to be a boon to his career, since prior to it he looked like this:

("Old school" Vino with his erstwhile lush brows.)

It's amazing how just a little eyebrow hair can make you look like a completely different person.

Anyway, Vino is emphatic that the win was his, and his domestique Jens Floaterhoist is willing to back him up completely. If you're unfamiliar with Jens Floaterhoist, he once purchased a Dauphiné Libéré stage win from George Hincapie for $19 and half a bottle of Snapple, and he's also the inventor of the Floaterhoist horizontal bike storage hoist:

Now, it's hard for me to comment on the design itself since I'm not an engineer, but I will say that the video contained some excellent disembodied hand porn:

And if you're worried about the safety of the design, you can rest assured that the inventor of the Floaterhoist says it's "OK:"

That's assuming both your ceiling height and bar width fall within the Floaterhoist's design parameters, and it's also assuming your bike doesn't come crashing down on top of you like a poorly-installed venetian blind, trapping you inside the frame of a 30lb low-end freeride bike. If this happens you're liable to languish that way for hours like a thief in the stockades, unless you're able to "MacGyver" some sort of grappling hook out of the front disc brake and retrieve the cellphone sitting frustratingly out of reach upon your coffee table.

Or, if you prefer your disgusting cycling news in moron-ese, you can read this instead:

As I mentioned yesterday, periodicals love to undermine cycling-related articles by giving them stupid headlines, and I can't think of any better way of dehumanizing the victims than by calling them "hipsters"--though I'm sure "hipsters" everywhere will be pleased to know that the Daily News officially recognizes them as an ethnic group.

Sure, you could ride what they call "daily household garbage," but it's really far more useful as a holiday-themed decoration.

Also compelling was this comment about the supposed "joys of bicycling:"

Michael Sauber

Perhaps a more festive idea would be to DECORATE YOURSELF on your way to work by bike. At 5 degrees out this am, I couldn't wear my sunglasses because the balaclava shielding my nose and mouth from the cold would get steamed up from my breath. If I exposed my mouth and nose (with a red ball on my nose to keep it warm) I could wear my glasses. Of course I'd have to have antlers on my healmet so others wouldn't think I just had too much to drink. It would also provide some festive joy to the poor souls who miss out on the joys of bicycling and are commuting by car.

So . . . Dear Snob whose sarcastic wit we have come to know and cherish as we search in vain for something meaningful in life that does not have two wheels, how do we know that you actually wrote today's column? Maybe you responded to the schmuck who wanted to write it for you by saying Okey-dokey-diddlty-poo, you can do it, as long as you pretend to be me saying no to your request. How do we know that's not what happened? Huh? How? Oh, and you told him he has to plug Rapha while he's at it. I'm having an existential crisis of SnobFaith!

WCRMI don't think it would be good for you to build an urban chicken coop-what would your piegions think..also you would have to worry about vectoring uninary bird flu and like deiseases through the different species..and for the growers would you have to seprerate the fece////fetalizer?

I wanted to know more about the Christian Underwear of the Month club -- studly Jesus on my briefs? A visit from Amy Grant? -- and was bummed to see that it's just the designer's name. Guess I'll stick with the Anarchist Underwear of the Month Club, where sometimes you get underwear, sometimes you get socks, sometimes you don't get anything.

"The details of my life are quite inconsequential ... Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize; he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament ... My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon ... luge lessons ... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets ... or HealMeats..When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard, really. At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Vilmer ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum (scranus) — it's breathtaking ... I suggest you try it."

sad stuff. drivers need to take more care. i drivers doing the most eggregious shit in NYC running lights that just turned red, speeding down narrow one way streets, taking turns without looking, etc, without realizing the consequences. in come cases those consequences can be death or serious injury and what for, so the driver can save two seconds on thier drive? take your head out of your ass and think for just a second before you do something dangerously stupid. Same goes to a lot of my fellow cyclists. I can't tell you how many times i see some douchebag drift into oncoming traffic against a light.

Am I living in denial if I refuse to read any more news articles about cyclists who get killed? It's always the same story, same tone, the cops don't even investigate what might have caused the "accident", and then the comments section... Might as well be squirrels to the cops and bitter, 50-somethings who absolutely have to drive to pick up their egg foo yung (not too spicy!!!!).

I just remembered that I actually do know a bit of Boston bike controversy! The lead opponent in the debate about whether to tear down the ancient 50's era local highway infrastructure bridge and replace it with a multimodal greenway-style boulevard is none other than the LBS owner! It's amazing. He's trying to rally the car drivers to "save the bridge" because it's somehow safer. Separated cycle tracks and reworked intersections seem a lot safer to me, and so thinks the Boston Cyclists' Union, the Livable Streets Alliance, WalkBoston, the Emerald Necklace Conservatory, the list goes on.

I can only imagine that he's worried the dentists won't be able to bring in their Serottas from the suburbs and they'll pick some other neighborhood's LBS to patronize with their Fredly ways and 1% dollars. (Actually I doubt very many dentists are actually 1%ers. They're probably 5%ers who have it just good enough that they're willing to turn their back on the rest of the 99%.)

Anyway, the bridge is called the Casey Overpass and Jeff Ferris is the LBS owner. It's a bizarre role reversal. Since when does the highway engineer advocate removing the bridge and the local bike guru advocate keeping it?

Here's a TLDR take on it from the director of Livable Streets: http://blog.livablestreets.info/?p=526Here's Jeff's letter to our local rag, where he appears divorced from reality. I especially love the comments by his fellow working group members: http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/2011/11/18/letter-a-new-bridge-is-better-for-overpass/And the BCU's take: http://bostoncyclistsunion.org/uncategorized/time-to-chime-in-on-the-casey-overpass/

Recently, I was riding down a two way street (double lines) with no cars around. I'm about to turn left.I check for a car (never assume the coast is clear); sure enough, a driver tried to pass me by driving on to the incoming lane! I held my line as the car drove by thisclose. Both driver and passenger turned in their seats to look at me. Their jaws were dropped, astonished at what just happened, like they expected to kill me.I should rant and rave about how lawless some divers are, but their illiteracy makes the point moot.

SAPA aluminum in Portland announced they are closing their bicycle frame facilities. SAPA made frames for Turner, Ventana, Mountain Cycle, Zerode, Rotec, Spooky and many other small, high end companies. One big step closer to all performance bikes being made in Taiwan.

Seems like the only people making bikes in the states anymore are the artinsal BS artists more skilled at blowing smoke up orifices, than welding.

A hanging bike rack you can stand underneath -with a mountain bike above?

If you do take your MTB out for the rainy season (here in the UK, from January to December) it will come back dripping with mud, or worse "farm mud", which is the same colour but smells like it is fresh from a cow's bottom.

There is no way you would want to get underneath something like that, or have it above anything other than a washable mat.

Oh, and if you keep the bike on its side the hydraulics will get air in them and not work so well.

MTBs need to be kept somewhere you can get them in and out the house easily, somewhere with a cleanable mat underneath for the bike and where you strip your wet and muddy clothing off, leaving them to dry on the frame for the next day. And locked to the bulding via a heavy chain.

SAPA made frames for Turner, Ventana, Mountain Cycle, Zerode, Rotec, Spooky and many other small, high end companies. One big step closer to all performance bikes being made in Taiwan.

You might as well have listed Itchy, Scratchy, Huey, Duey, Lewie, 'cause I ain't hear of any of them. This MAY have something to do with them closing down. That, and that fact that any idiot in Portland now runs a bespoke bike company.

BITD, SAPA and Kinesis had their frame building shops on the same street in Portland, and produced the vast majority of mountain bikes that had a "made in the USA" sticker. Back before bike culture.NUTSACK

McGuiness and Nassau doesn't even make the top 10 in Brooklyn according to TA. A total of 36 peds and 3 cyclists were hit there by motor vehicles between 1995 and 2009. The hipsters must be worth more.

This comment is sure to bring me the enmity of the hipsterati in Bklyn, but so be it.You didn't grow up in New York, so you get a fixed-gear bike for the meaningless pursuit of street cred.NEWS FLASH: you're not fooling anyone. The locals know you're not from 'round the way'. Safety first with the bikes, already. How many more deaths will it take to drive the point home?

An artist, a deejay and a web designer (sounds like the beginning of a joke) all killed while riding. How are the food delivery folks doing? Are they being killed just as much? Or do we just don't hear about them?

People ought not cry about frame mfg going overseas. It always does in the end. And, its legal.

Summation: That is why there are people in Occupy Wall Street. Those folks on Wall Street can move their labor offshore, make a lot of bucks, and repatriate it here with no downside. Free trade yes, but how free is loss of jobs here? Bankers, Manufacturers, etc get to be important people. The rest of us be damned.

There are too many custom bike builders in the US. Far too many for the prices they expect. Shit, even Vito can braze Reynolds.

Since the economic crash, the twat cycle of people borrowing money to buy overpriced poser bikes has collapsed. Now, more people are buying bikes that perform relative to cost, not how "real" they are.

it's too bad that Juan Antonio Flecha and Johnny Hoogerland aren't of the same riding caliber as Lucas Brunelle or they never would have gotten hit by that French television car. maybe Brunelle's video should be required viewing for all "professional" Tour riders. perhaps even Brunelle himself could teach a workshop where riders could learn from his skills?

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!